As always, as the harvest arrives, we have to know what the weather is doing, but our simple problem is that the forecasts are proving to be very inaccurate. At the start of this week nearly every weather website said that Tuesday and Wednesday would be 100% rain. Naturally, we have set everything up to start on Thursday. So now, here we are, in the middle of Tuesday, looking out of the window at blue sky – not cloudless, but far from any sign of rain. Even now, these websites are forecasting rain at this time.

With hindsight we probably could have started our harvest at the weekend and enjoyed 3 or 4 days uninterrupted picking, but maybe, if we had taken the risk, then the forecasts could have been accurate. Having said that, it would appear that all of our neighbours have been hedging too, there is very little activity in Salnés at the moment.